by Myles, Eden
“I live to please my lord,” I answered, hoping to placate him.
At the center of the garden rose a great marble fountain carved into the shape of a beautiful woman. Coiled almost possessively around her legs was a giant wolf. I’d seen the statue many times as I walked in the garden, but only now asked him about it.
“I had the fountain commissioned a long time ago for some friends of mine. Their names were Maria and Simon. She was quite beautiful. Very desirable. And he was my friend, my captain of the guard. It was intended as a wedding gift to them, but when it was finished, it was so beautiful that I could not bear to part with it.” He stopped to touch the marble face of the woman.
“You miss them,” I guessed.
“They lived over a hundred years ago,” he answered only. “I would have courted Maria. I would have made her my wife and lady, but her heart was already taken by Simon.” He turned to look at me standing at his side. He guided the tulip against my face, a gentle, fluttering touch. “It was knowing Maria that convinced me that I should take a wife, that I needed to take a wife.”
He leaned down and I felt the cold press of his lips against mine. I tried to kiss him back. I really did try. But it was like kissing the dead. His lips were cool and strangely lifeless. Eventually he gave up and leaned back, his eyes roving over my face with angry displeasure. “Livia…”
“I’m sorry. It’s so soon. I’m not ready,” I babbled.
He grabbed my chin and forced my head aside with a hard jerk, then his mouth was there, tracing the slope of my cheek down to my neck. “I need you, Livia. Without you I have no strength. Without you I have no life!”
Dr. Von Holtz had warned me that Rothschild might force me, that he was, in fact, dependent on me. According to the Doctor, a vampire needed a source of constant red life. Without it, they might still live, but they were weak and their powers erratic. They would never know true power until they had a willing donor, a partner—a human mate.
I shuddered as I felt Rothschild’s cold lips, his feeding teeth descending. I knew his eyes were as black as sin, even though I could not see them. I had to think fast.
“Not yet, please,” I pleaded, placing both hands against his chest. It was like trying to hold back a dam made of marble. “I will be yours, my lord, but please wait.”
“Wait?” Rothschild’s voice was a low, animal-like growl against the shivery skin of my cheek. His hand moved to the bodice of my gown where he grasped my left breast almost frantically. His grip hurt. “I’ve waited years for you to return to me, Olivia!”
“Wait just a little while longer! Just until we are married!” I gasped out. My heart was thudding wildly in my chest and my hands already clenching into fists, ready to fight the vampire off, though I knew it would be futile. He would tear me apart long before I ever struck him a single blow. “I want to be a virtuous wife for you, Elric! A good wife! A virginal wife!”
He licked along the side of my neck, and his teeth pricked me only briefly before he withdrew and looked at me steadily—searching, I knew, for the deception in my face. But I was so frightened, I meant what I said when I blurted out, “Have mercy, my lord! Let our wedding night be the start of our new life together as lord and lady of Blackstone Hall!”
His grip on my breast lessened. “We must be married soon, then,” he said. His eyes were black and frantic, and his mouth deep with teeth. “I cannot wait much longer, Olivia.”
I forced myself to reach up and touch his withered cheek. “If you truly believe me to be Olivia, your Olivia, then you will be patient with me.”
“I cannot be patient forever.” The touch of my hand seemed to calm him somewhat. He clasped my hand and closed his eyes. “We should start making our wedding plans soon.” He took my hand and kissed it. His lips were ice cold.
I felt a wash of relief at his words. But, in truth, I had merely forestalled his hunger. I had not escaped it. Not yet.
* * *
Chapter X
Lightning flickered as fast a lizard’s tongue outside the tower window, briefly illuminating all the dank, dark corners of the laboratory. It lit up the Device briefly so I could see everything going on inside the cylindrical glass compartment.
I put my hand upon the glass and observed our little creation coming to life. I sucked in a breath and marveled at the fully grown snowy owl shivering as all its little nerve endings finished connecting and its body pushed out the last of its glossy white feathers. Its eyes were open at last and it observed the world it had been born into with wonder and bewilderment, not unlike how I had that very first night of my existence.
Dr. Von Holtz came up behind me and set his hand on my shoulder. “You did well, Livia.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” I answered, a swell of pride making me stand tall.
The owl had been my project. I had wanted to know how the Device worked from the ground up, so a couple of days ago, Dr. Von Holtz had shown me what chemicals to put together, how to set the Device, and, finally, asked me what material I wanted to use.
There was scant little once-living material available in the laboratory, and he said the preserved creatures in their jars were too old to be of value to our research. Thus, I had chosen a quill from off the desk where the Doctor made his notes and placed it in the glass incubator. From that quill—only two days ago—this beautiful living being had emerged.
My accomplishment pleased my creator. He leaned down and kissed along my neck and shoulder, stopping only when he encountered the little fading bruise that Lord Rothschild had given me during our walk in the garden two days ago. “Did he hurt you?” he said, sounding supremely insulted. His hands tightened on my shoulders most possessively.
“No. I stopped him. I told him I wanted him to leave my virginity intact. For our wedding night.”
“Clever, Livia, but it won’t stop him.” He came around and cupped my face in his hands. Looked up at him, at this handsome man with his chiseled face, scholarly glasses, and stubborn, set jawline. “Did you set a definite wedding date, then?” He was frowning with concern.
I hadn’t wanted to talk about this. It was too depressing. “Not exactly, Doctor. But Rothschild said he wants it soon.”
“I see.” He looked briefly toward the window, the storm rolling in, that concentrated frown I knew so well still on his face. “It would seem I need to work faster to help you escape.”
I thought about asking him for details, but I knew he was still working out a way for me to escape without Rothschild pursuing me. He said that was important, that I had to trust him. I would need to do that. I knew I would need to be patient, though I suspected that patience was never one of Olivia’s virtues.
“I’m sure it will work out, whatever it is,” I said to encourage him.
To take my mind off my immediately concerns, I walked over to the Doctor’s workbench. He had many new devices set up that he was working on. I had learned early on that Dr. Von Holtz was a compulsive inventor as well as a learned doctor. His years as a war surgeon had given him many occasions to invent a new device that might help him in his practice. He was dedicated to helping to save more lives on the battlefield. It was one of the reasons Lord Rothschild had taken such an interest in him.
Among the bric-a-brac I saw something new today—a long, metal wand about a foot long, thick and round, with a hilt of complex machinery. I had not seen this device among his things yesterday. “Doctor?” I asked, turning toward him with the device in hand.
He strode across the room. “I’m been working on that, in the event we need to escape suddenly in the night.”
I analyzed it but could not make heads or tails of it. “What does it do?”
He took it from me and switched it on. I heard a slight vibration, and when he brought the smooth side of the wand against my bare shoulder, I could feel its pulsing warmth the machinery generated soaking into my skin. He moved it up and down and the pleasant, warming sensation prickled my skin. “I made it for soldiers suff
ering frostbite in deep snow, to warm their fingers and limbs and to circulate their blood more quickly and efficiently,” he explained.
“It feels good,” I told him. I leaned back in his arms as he traced the contour of my shoulder and then the slope of my neck until he’d reached my ear. He then raced it along my jawline to my chin and, briefly, over my lips.
“Doctor,” I whispered with a shiver, but I could tell he was enjoying himself, enjoying my reaction to his little toy.
He moved it down my throat to encircle my flitting pulse before dropping it further to the neckline of my bodice. I swallowed as the tingling warmth migrated downward through my body and gathered in my lower extremities. When he passed the pulsing wand over the slope of my breasts, pausing briefly to warm my nipples through the dress, I actually cried out.
“Livia?” he breathed against the side of my neck, raising the gooseflesh there. “I didn’t hurt you?”
“No,” I told him. “I’m just very sensitive there.”
“Where?” he asked, his lips and teeth grazing my skin in an affectionate bite.
“Everywhere you touch me,” I told him. It was the absolute truth.
“Hmm…” he responded. One arm slid around my waist to keep me in place. The other guided the wand down the front of my body. Everywhere the wand touched me it sparked an erotic fire in my skin. I tried not to moan and writhe and make a fool of myself, but the way he held me, controlled my body, moved the wand over my sensitive places, made me gasp in amazement. “You’re like some work of art,” he murmured into the side of my neck.
He set the wand down on the work bench just long enough to turn me around. “I want to see you,” he said, and I tried to quiet the rush of panic and excitement shooting through me. I wanted to please him. I wanted to not disappointment him. But a part me of was simply terrified of his rejection.
He trailed his fingers over my lips and down the front of my corseted bodice. “Let me undress you, my little pleasure doll,” he growled in my ear. “I want to touch you. I want to explore every inch of you. But I don’t want you to react. I want you to come only when I say. I want you to control yourself…let me control you. Can you do that?”
My heart hammered in my chest. I nodded wordlessly.
He slid one big hand along my back to hold me in place while his other undid the cording of my corset. I gasped as he took my right breast in hand, roughly, like I belonged to him, ran the callused pads of his fingers over the already stiffened and oversensitive peak, pinched it, drew it out. Meanwhile, his tongue slithered around the cup of my ear. I closed my eyes and gasped to try and maintain my composition.
“Open your eyes, Livia,” he told me. “I want you to watch what I do to you.”
“Yes, Doctor.” I watched him slide my corset off, then tease each of my nipples, first with his fingers, then with his teeth. I arched my back, whimpered, and struggled now to writhe and cry out for him.
As he slid my skirts and petticoats off, his hands molded to my every curve, squeezing me and following the contours of my body as if he were memorizing every inch of me. Soon enough I was nearly mad with desire. Naked, my body thrust and flexed in an effort to be closer to him, to connect to him, and my breath came out in a ragged pant.
“Oh gods, Doctor, take me…fill me…” I whimpered.
“Not yet,” he whispered hoarsely. His face was carven and hard with lust. Taking me by the hips, he easily lifted me to the top of the workbench, moving aside his devices as he did so, and set me down before him so we were almost eye to eye. Next he dropped to his knees and forced my legs open. A lingering embarrassment made me resist him until he slapped my bare cunt, once, sharply and efficiently. The sudden pain made me moan and jump. “Don’t close your legs to me, Livia,” he commanded.
I struggled to keep my legs open while Dr. Von Holtz took up the wand once more and began drawing it between my breasts and down the centerline of my body to my navel. He warmed me there in slow circles before continuing down my lower belly to my fully exposed cunt. I groaned and tried to shift myself closer to the warmth his little device was putting out, but he deftly moved it to just outside my reach.
“Please…” I whimpered, but he just passed the wand down the insides of my thighs, avoiding the aching heart of me at all costs. He watched me as he teased me, his eyes devouring my every reaction.
“You’re so sensitive and responsive to stimuli…” he whispered. “Your every nerve must be perfectly formed and connected.”
“Hmm,” I said and writhed for him, the fingers of both hands digging into the edge of the bench to keep me from springing right off it, to keep myself from coming. I wanted to be good for him. I wanted to obey him. My creator.
Finally, finally he used two fingers to part my wet folds and glided the warmth of the wand briefly over my exposed clit. The stimuli were too much, too close to the knife-edge of pain, and I jumped and felt myself come unexpectedly, my lower muscles clenching spastically in response. Then warmth was dripping down the insides of my legs, and the sudden, tiny orgasm left me gasping and shaking, wet and filled with warmth.
I wanted to say I love you, but the Doctor looked displeased. “You didn’t listen. Now I’ll have to punish you, Livia.”
Again he glided the wand over my now well-soaked opening, over my incredibly sensitive little bud. My stomach muscles bunched up at the touch, but he quickly moved the wand away. I almost screamed in frustration, then I felt the wand warm me again as he entered me with it, slowly but inexorably, stretching the walls of my cunt, forcing my body to take a good nine inches of it. I moaned, shuddered, but he didn’t relent. Tingling warmth immediately filled my lower half, spiraling outward, and I hissed between my teeth at the sensation, my fingernails scratching at the surface of the table.
I groaned long and loud as he seated the warm wand deep inside of me, then quickly went back to plucking and licking at my swollen little nub. “Ohhh…” I cried aloud, then remembered the open windows of the wizard’s tower, and, afraid someone might hear us, I tried to control myself.
It was nearly impossible with the way he licked and teased me, changing his rhythm constantly so my entire body reacted to him like a finely tuned machine. Soon enough, I was crying out shamelessly and drawing my knees up around his shoulders as my entire body went rigid and my back bowed with another impending orgasm. This time I trembled and dug my fingers into Dr. Von Holtz’s thick greying hair as he pushed me over the edge. The release that followed left me gasping and panting and feeling shattered.
When the last tremors left my body, he looked up and his expression was hard and demanding, filled with a man’s wild hunger. “Stand up and give me your ass.”
I obediently found my legs, turned, and gripped the work bench for balance, trembling from the constantly spirals of warmth that the wand was producing deep inside of me. The feel of it made me want to sink to my knees with a scream, but before I could move, or even cry out, he grabbed me by the hair and held me upright while undoing the placket of his trousers. I cried out at his rough handling of me, but he didn’t relent and his grip never lessened.
“Livia…” he hissed, his voice hoarse with desire. “Livia…can you understand me?”
“Y-yes, Doctor…”
“I’m going to have my way with you, Livia.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“I’m going to claim that lovely ass of yours.”
“Y-yes,” I hissed between my teeth.
He pushed me forward a little so I was bent over the table and at a better angle for him to take me and stroked the fat, swollen head of his cock against my dripping slit. Our combined wetness dripped down the inside of my legs. He dabbled his fingers in it and rubbed it thoroughly between my ass cheeks. He rubbed and rubbed, wetting me thoroughly before allowing the crown of his cock to penetrate my opening.
I arched my back at the sensation and gritted my teeth. A combination of pleasure and terrific pressure animated me and made me scrabble a
t the surface of the table. “Oh gods…”
“Bear down,” he hissed in my ear and I obeyed even as he plunged his hugely swollen cock deep inside my ass.
I cried out as he filled me, my inner muscles gripping him, squeezing him tight so he let out a low growl of pleasure in the cup of my ear. Then he was shuttling to and fro inside me, filling me briefly before withdrawing almost to the end of me before filling me once more.
“Gods, Livia, you’re so beautiful, such a good little pleasure doll,” he said.
His words made my heart swell with pride. If Rothschild had said them, I would have been ashamed, but the Doctor’s voice was filled with warmth and emotion. Love.
His rutting soon grew rough and demanding, and before long he was jerking me almost violently against the table, subduing me, conquering this part of me. He remembered the wand, and, taking it by the hilt, plunged it gently in and out of me even as he pumped his cock deep into my ass. The double penetration was too much and my legs turned to water and would have spilled me to the floor, except that he had me pinned to the work bench.
Soon I was crying out, and I’m sure the whole court would have heard me except that the storm was now directly above us, and the almost constant rolls of thunder drowned out my screams of pleasure. The room filled with flitting shadows of dark and light, and lightning crackled just outside the window. An almost horizontal rain slashed at the tower, itself like a dull, ongoing roar of approaching war drums.
Dr. Von Holtz breathed roughly in my ear, his teeth grazing my earlobe as he pumped madly into me, his fingers teasing my clit and thrusting the wand steadily inside me so that I felt I would fly apart from the sensation of being mastered this way. I came hard, screaming and writhing against him as another orgasm bloomed outward and made my body jerk like a puppet against him. He struggled to hold onto me and growled low in his throat as he buried himself to the balls inside my ass and came with a shudder, his teeth finding the side of my neck where Lord Rothschild had almost taken me and biting me as he filled me with his seed.